Leipzig receives funding for local education initiative/Media Foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig assumes basic Sponsorship
Within the next three years, the city of Leipzig receives funding from the Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) and the European Social Fund (ESF) for the development of a community approach to education. This was announced by the initiative "Lernen vor Ort" today in Berlin.
Beside Leipzig, 39 other German municipalities will receive grants totaling 60 million euros. A multi-phase selection process had applied a total of 150 locations from 15 states for the funding.
The initiative "Lernen vor Ort" was jointly introduced by the BMBF and the foundation's network "Lernen vor Ort" three years ago. The Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig is one of the 29 founding members of the initiative. Inter alia the combine consists of the Bertelsmann Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation and the Körber Foundation in Hamburg. Altogether 106 foundations participate in the educational initiative.
With the additional funding Leipzig wants to ensure that the private and public education will be linked better with each other in the city. Thus, the education of the citizens of Leipzig will become smoothly from kindergarten to university for senior citizens and will sustainably increase the equality of opportunity of the residents in future.
"With this project, we get the opportunity to give fresh impetus to Leipzig's educational landscape," says Mayor Thomas Fabian. "We want to link daycare, school, business and culture more closely together to ensure that the educational opportunities for children and adolescents, but also for adults will be improved in situ. Even in the preparation of our application, there was a wide collaboration of many actors from very different areas. "
The city is also supported by the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig, which assumes the basic sponsorship and inter alia shares its experiences in education and training in the project. The Foundation will assist in educational monitoring as well as in the preparation of communications and marketing strategy. The "Media Campus Villa Ida" of the Foundation provides an appropriate infrastructure for educational projects and events of this initiative.
"Since longer time Media Foundation has been working hard for the idea of lifelong learning with numerous efforts. Education is a central locational factor to us, which can only be developed further through common efforts.", said Stephan Seeger, Managing Member of the Board and Director Foundations of Sparkasse Leipzig. Seeger also said: "This is an opportunity we intend to use for the sake of Leipzig."
In its dimension the initiative "Lernen vor Ort" is an unique public-private partnership, which will newly determine the course for lifelong learning in the municipalities.